# Forge Utah **Type:** resource **Status:** Draft **Confidence:** Medium **Tier:** D* **Focus:** developer community, meetups, hack nights, engineering leadership roundtables, conference, statewide event calendar **Domain:** computing, culture-place **Identifiers:** ein=84-3886600 **Primary Location:** Utah **Utah Location:** statewide **Region:** statewide **Website:** https://forgeutah.tech **Updated:** 2026-08-11 **Pull:** *A volunteer-run 501(c)(3) that has quietly become the default meeting place for Utah engineers — and the hardest one to find on purpose.* **Relates:** cites [Official Website: Forge Utah Foundation](forge-utah-official-website.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/forge-utah-official-website.md · https://forgeutah.tech/ ## Summary Forge Utah Foundation is a volunteer-run not-for-profit connecting Utah's developers, data scientists, SREs, and tinkerers. It says it was established in 2015 and describes itself as a 501(c)(3); the IRS exempt-organizations file carries **FORGE FOUNDATION INC**, in care of *Forge Utah Foundation*, Lehi, Utah, under subsection 03. It runs three things: **meetups** — Utah Go User Group, Utah Kubernetes, Utah Data Engineering Meetup, AI Utah, and The Foundry Hack Nights, across the Wasatch Front and St George — **roundtables** for engineering leaders and senior ICs, and the annual single-track **Go West Conference**. It also operates [utahtechcalendar.com](utah-tech-calendar.md), a statewide calendar that aggregates its own events and everyone else's. Its centre of gravity, though, is a Slack workspace. That is where the meetups are announced, where `#jobs` and `#jobs-wanted` run, and where a large share of what this wiki knows about the current state of Utah's software community was said out loud. ## Who It's For Working technologists in Utah, at any level, and people trying to become them. The foundation's own framing is deliberately wide: "If you write code, wrangle data, keep servers alive, or solder things on weekends, you belong here." Three distinct audiences are visible in what it runs: - **Practitioners** looking for a peer group in a specific technology — the meetups are organized by stack (Go, Kubernetes, data engineering, AI) rather than by employer or seniority. - **Engineering leaders** — the roundtables are explicitly small-group, no-slides, and pitched at people who have a real problem and want to hear how others solved it. - **People looking for work.** The `#jobs` channel carries structured postings from Utah employers, and `#jobs-wanted` carries the other side. Over the six months to August 2026 those postings named 51 distinct employers, which is a fair proxy for who is actually hiring in Utah software. The foundation states it takes no sponsor money in exchange for access and hosts no recruiter pitches. ## How To Use It 1. **Join the Slack.** It is the live layer; the website is a description of the foundation, not a schedule. The join link is on the homepage. 2. **Find an event** on [utahtechcalendar.com](utah-tech-calendar.md), which covers the wider Utah ecosystem rather than only Forge's own nights. 3. **Go West Conference** is the annual gathering — single-track, priced low deliberately, no expo hall. It is the one thing on the list with a ticket. 4. Meetups and hack nights are free to attend and volunteer-run, so the practical commitment is showing up. **Finding the site at all is the first obstacle**, and it is worth stating plainly for anyone following this page: `forgeut.dev`, `forgeutah.org`, and `forgeutah.com` do not serve a homepage as of 2026-08-11. The live site is **forgeutah.tech**, which is reachable from the foundation's GitHub organization profile and not much else. ## Open Questions - **How large is it?** No membership, attendance, or Slack headcount figure is published anywhere located for this page. "Utah's community for engineers" is a self-description with no denominator. - **Why does the IRS ruling date say 2025-07 when the site says "est. 2015"?** Both may be true — a long-running volunteer community that only recently sought federal exemption — but no located source explains the ten-year gap, so the reason remains unknown. - **What are its finances?** The BMF row shows zero assets, zero income, and a filing requirement consistent with a small organization, which suggests it operates well under the 990-filing threshold. That is an inference from a filing code, not a statement of budget. - **Who runs it?** Clint Berry is identified in the Slack workspace as president of the foundation and Derrick Laird as a Go West organizer, but no located public page on the foundation's own site names its board or officers. - Are the named meetups (Utah Go, Utah Kubernetes, UDEM, AI Utah, The Foundry) Forge programs or independent groups it lists? The site presents them together; the distinction matters for whether each is its own atom here. ## Evidence - [Official Website: Forge Utah Foundation](forge-utah-official-website.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/forge-utah-official-website.md · https://forgeutah.tech/ - [Source: IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Utah Extract](irs-bmf-utah-exempt-organizations.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/irs-bmf-utah-exempt-organizations.md — EIN 84-3886600, FORGE FOUNDATION INC, Lehi UT, subsection 03, ruling 2025-07 ## See Also - [Utah Tech Calendar](utah-tech-calendar.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/utah-tech-calendar.md - [JustBuild](justbuild.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/justbuild.md - [Silicon Slopes](silicon-slopes.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/silicon-slopes.md - [UtahJS](utahjs.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/utahjs.md